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Saturday, September 26, 2009

The thing is, time was

One of the ways that an iTunes library will always be inferior to physical CDs, records, tapes, etc. is that songs are much more likely to get lost in a sea of music when they are digital files. Even on my iPod, which contains about 25% of the music on my computer, I really favor probably a 10% chunk for frequent listening. There are so many hidden gems in my iTunes library that have simply been lost in the shuffle.

Anyway, I found a song this morning that I had forgotten about and I immediately added it to my favorites list. It is The Williams Brothers "Some Become Strangers". Actually, in my world, it's their cover of Stevie Nicks' "Some Become Strangers", but that is not really accurate as they wrote it, even though Stevie recorded it before them. I have spent the last 15 minutes looking for an embeddable version of their video for the song, but I can't - a state of affairs I always find utterly ridiculous. Anyway, I think it's gorgeous, moody and very autumnal. Watch it here. Seriously. Do it.

What I think is funny about this is how similar and different it is from Stevie's version, which she recorded for Rock A Little in 1985. Listen to Stevie's after you listen to theirs and you'll see what I mean.

I can't decide which I like more - obviously I have much more history with Stevie's version. I think it's funny how there's differences in nearly ever line of the first verse between the two versions. Plus I love the Stevie stamp of "I don't really need this in my life! / Why don't we forget about it?" at the end of the bridge which the Williams Brothers wisely did not use.

I am trying to find a copy of the album this song came from but - to no one's shock, it is not available for download on either Amazon or iTunes. The only copies for sale are used copies. I will NEVER understand why anything is out of print now. The artists will not make money off of sales of used copies, whereas if they put it up on iTunes for $7.99, I would have already purchased it and they would have my money. But the record companies are too busy going after 30 second song samples to actually be paying attention to what consumers want. (Earth to the music industry, that's called FAIR USE!)

Anyway, this is a perfect song for this gray weekend. Hopefully I can find some more of their music.(I found their second album, The Williams Brothers, on iTunes hidden amongst the discography of the gospel group of the same name!)